This programme presents, for your enjoyment, the best animated shorts from the Baltic-Nordic countries. Outstanding works from Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania will be competing for the Best Animated Short Award, decided by an international jury.
Aneta Ozorek, David OReilly, Monika Gimbutaitė
2023 / Poland, Spain / 3 min 2 s
A visit to the border between Belarus and Poland.
Directed by Pablo Ballarín Screenwriter: Pablo Ballarín
2023 / Estonia / 3 min 26 s
A talented juggler's life takes a sudden twist when his treasured juggling balls are stolen. Determined to retrieve his cherished possessions, he embarks on an adventure, aided by acrobatic rabbits, dancing frogs and some shocking truths about his own existence.
Directed by Rebeka Kruus Screenwriter: Rebeka Kruus Producer: Lyza Jarvis Company: Estonian Academy of Arts
2023 / Poland / 10 min 45 s
The film tells a story about struggling with pain and suffering. It touches on a very personal experience. It is a story of loneliness, anger and grief experienced by parents who lose a child. It is an intimate and emotional visualization of the world in which bereaved people live. It tells about a situation for which no one is prepared, and the 'catalogue' of reactions we have known up to that point becomes useless.
Directed by Paweł Prewencki Screenwriter: Paweł Prewencki Producer: Ewa Sobolewska Company: TV Studio Filmów Animowanych sp. z o.o.
2023 / Sweden / 7 min 20 s
A love so strong it enables time travel.
Directed by Thomas Costa Freté Screenwriter: Thomas Costa Freté Producer: Thomas Costa Freté
2023 / Finland / 10 min 49 s
A nun digs up a man from the ground and loses her grip on everyday life. Can harmony and secrets coexist?
Directed by Heta Jäälinoja Screenwriter: Heta Jäälinoja Producer: Jani Lehto Company: Böhle Studios
2023 / Denmark / 6 min 34 s
Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Swineherd” as you have never seen it before! In this entirely goofy and funny version of H.C. Andersen's famous fairy tale "The Swineherd", we meet the young swineherd who sits and looks after the king's pigs. Even though it is Christmas, the boy and the pigs are bored in the pigsty. But whoa! Suddenly the boy remembers his magic pot.
Directed by Peter Smith, Magnus Igland Møller Producer: Fleng Entertainment and Tumblehead production
2023 / Poland / 9 min 50 s
After years of emigration the granddaughter longs to go home to see her beloved grandmother again.
Directed by Agnieszka Kruczek Screenwriter: Agnieszka Kruczek Producers: Piotr Furmankiewicz, Mateusz Michalak Company: FUMI Studio
2023 / Germany / 15 min 34 s
Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth.
Directed by Voker Schlecht Screenwriters: Max Mönch, Alexander Lahl Producers: Volker Schlecht, Alexander Lahl, Max Mönch Company: Fabian&Fred
2023 / Poland / 1 min 53 s
A short story about a man - one of the species that once inhabited Earth. A story intriguing and surprising as the renovation of the bathroom, but at the same time condensed like a cistern walled in the wall and hard to unscrew like a valve in the main sewer line.
Directed by Kamil Wójcik Screenwriter: Kamil Wójcik Producer: Kamil Wójcik
2024 / Sweden / 3 min 32 s
In a park at night, ghosts from discarded bottles come to life. They gather to dance and conjure up rain that they drink with relish. However the sun rises and they eventually melt into dew. A fictional tale of nature, inspired by the musicality of Disney's Fantasia (1940) and the soft, theatrical aesthetics of Jiří Trnka.
Directed by Emma Richey Screenwriter: Emma Richey Producer: Emma Richey
2023 / Poland, UK / 11 min 0 s
As part of a fishing community’s annual ritual, a young boy must kill his first crab in order to become a man and gain his father’s approval.
Directed by Ross Stringer Screenwriter: Aleksandra Sykulak Producer: Bartosz Stanislawek
2023 / Germany / 12 min 36 s
Dodo‘s father is a big blue bird. One day he flies away from the window, and hasn‘t come back. From then on, Dodo stops growing up.
Directed by Yi Luo Screenwriter: Yi Luo Producers: Jiayan Chen, Yi Luo
2023 / Poland / 4 min 4 s
Left alone in the world, the last survivor, walks around an empty city, wondering on what there is to come.
Directed by Joanna Żybul Screenwriter: Joanna Żybul Producer: The Polish National Film School in Lodz
2023 / Latvia, Korea, UK / 1 min 56 s
A bird is migrating to warmer lands.
Directed by Arturs Voblikovs Screenwriter: Arturs Voblikovs
2023 / Poland / 2 min 0 s
When you finally arrive at your favorite snorkeling spot but then suddenly everything is getting out of control. A very short story in three acts.
Directed by Malgorzata Rybak Screenwriter: Malgorzata Rybak Producer: Malgorzata Rybak
2023 / Poland, Switzerland / 10 min 48 s
Full of exuberance and frivolousness, six friends drive to the Polish Baltic coast and back in a small, dented car. During their trip, their car and their country fall apart. Nevertheless, life goes on. Their journey is interfused with memories and snapshots from the past.
Directed by Jadwiga Kowalska Screenwriter: Jadwiga Kowalska Producer: Jadwiga Kowalska Company: Jadwiga Kowalska Animation & Illustration
2023 / Latvia / 5 min 16 s
In the deep countryside of Latvia, relatives and neighbors, near and distant, come together to celebrate the last important ritual of human life. A series of events and details reveal a picture where two different eras overlap.
Directed by Linda Stūre Screenwriter: Linda Stūre Producer: Sabīne Andersone Company: Atom Art
2024 / Lithuania, France / 12 min 4 s
Anxious teenager Ūla is taken on an unexpected adventure during her swimming practise, through which she grows-up and learns to see her body anew.
Directed by Eglė Davidavičė Screenwriter: Eglė Davidavičė Producers: Agnė Adomėnė, Delphine Schmit Company: Art Shot, Tripode Productions
2023 / Poland / 8 min 0 s
War is not only great battles, but above all small, everyday skirmishes of millions of people affected by it. Grandma Zosia knows this first hand. With extraordinary distance and a sense of humor, she talks about the difficulties of the wartime and camp reality she experienced as a young girl. The film, apart from outlining the history, primarily presents an extraordinary person with an exceptional character, which is grandma Zosia.
Directed by Helena Stańczyk Screenwriter: Helena Stańczyk Producer: Helena Stańczyk
2023 / Germany, US / 10 min 44 s
The 80s. A run-down motel. This is where a secret club of robot friends gather regularly to live out their dreams of being something else. They share a desire to be animals. On this night, it’s a goodbye party for one of them. This friend will change and leave for good.
Directed by Jan Bitzer Screenwriter: Jan Bitzer Producers: Christian “Chan” Zehetmeier, Ilija Brunck, Jan Bitzer, Jona Brunck Company: Fabian&Fred
2023 / Germany, Poland, UK / 8 min 3 s
A woman who is escaping an abusive situation stumbles and finds herself eye to eye with a hen who is in the same situation. Even though they are separated by a fence as well as by species they develop a mutual understanding based on the outward shared symptoms of their pain: sore skin. In the moment of their connection we see flashbacks to the origin of their pain. As the woman smokes a cigarette to calm her nerves, she and the chicken come up with a plan: to set the world on fire to match their burning skin. The fire may be imaginary but nevertheless it soothes and provides catharsis.
Directed by Anna Benner Screenwriter: Anna Benner Producer: Anna Benner
2024 / Finland / 8 min 31 s
Girls have been cultivated like flowers for generations. We need more growing seasons to breed new ways into the system.
Directed by Elli Vuorinen Screenwriter: Elli Vuorinen Producers: Kimmo Sillanmikko, Jani Lehto Company: Böhle Studios
2024 / Germany, US / 1 min 48 s
Cows love grass. We love cows.
Directed by Felix Ferdinand Lipp Screenwriter: Felix Ferdinand Lipp Producer: Felix Ferdinand Lipp
2023 / Estonia / 12 min 55 s
It is Peter’s first summer in the countryside! All seems to be going well until the innkeeper's dead grandfather tries to eat him.
Directed by Mikk Mägi Screenwriter: Mikk Mägi Producer: Kristel Tõldsepp Company: A Film Estonia
2023 / Poland / 5 min 46 s
Painterly impressions of the silhouette of a horse, its springy movements, the shape of the head, the fight of stallions. In addition to his own animation, the director presents studies on Leonardo da Vinci's horse, drawings by Pablo Picasso, Saul Steinberg and others, but also mythological figures such as a centaur and pegasus. It also shows how horses were painted by Japanese, Chinese and Paleolithic artists.
Directed by Witold Giersz Screenwriter: Witold Giersz Producers: Piotr Furmankiewicz, Mateusz Michalak Company: FUMI Studio
2023 / Denmark / 12 min 28 s
In a farmhouse a woman tries to lure the resident house spirit – a mischievous Nisse – with offerings of food. Spring is just around the corner, but a winter's chill still lingers. During the night as ghosts move through the house, the Nisse slips into the woman's dream. As day breaks he melts away, but something has changed; spring has arrived.
Directed by Pernille Kjaer Screenwriter: Pernille Kjaer Producer: Martina Scarpelli Company: Martina Scarpelli Studio